Returning

Catalog of woe,

no need to say;
the Book does show
costs we can’t defray,
wrongs we know
we made — but may
we mindfully sew
better seeds on our way,
share the harvest, go
lightly, kindly, fairly, and pray;
debts we can outgrow,
redeem to new day,
admitting what we owe
and honoring, lovingly, to pay.

© Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Good Neighbors: 2. Tuesday

They say you’re blessed when forgiven,
but I gotta say it:
Though I done my time,

            it seems like none forgave me.

I see other people who think they are better,
that they are outside of the rules
that hold me,
but they aren’t that upstanding;
it’s a bad joke.

When I was a young fool,
I struggled and I raged and I stole;
like I said: I’m not proud of what I done,
but I done the time for my crime.

What I seen in there,
it changed me:
it made me old,
it made me quiet;

Like an invisible hand on my shoulder,
it scared all the piss and bile right out of me.

You hear that?

I come out and I’m not afraid to tell what I done,
I am a different person, now,
and I want to be recognized,
to be known as new.

Do you hear that?

In the eyes of the law,
I know I am good, now—
they called it even and sprung me
—but no person will hire me.

That Power that changed me,
show Yourself, and give me hope;
that hope is where I hide my heart.
—protect me,
keep me out of trouble;
I don’t want to go back
to that other place, no more.

Hear me!
Hear me and preserve me!
Tell me, teach me, guide me
to a goal, a job, home;
help me to be useful,
and heal my soul
with true forgiveness!

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem is part of a cycle based on the so-called seven Penitential Psalms. The subtitle of the cycle is “Psalms from the Streets”. This entry is based on Psalm 32, and could be subtitled, “The Ex-Convict.”

Meditations in Fast Times: 33. I was all things to all people

Note to Readers: “Meditations in Fast Times” is a devotional writing experiment for the Season of Lent. Each day during the season, I am writing a poem as a meditation on, taking as my inspiration and intertextual basis, T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, as well as incorporating the daily office, current events, and other readings—some the same as those Eliot used while composing his seminal work and others.

                33.

I was all things to all people,
and the results are worthless.

The wisdom age and experience
reputedly should reveal
are merely self-deceptions,
vain peerings into the darkness
with eyes that are blind,
or rather, eyes never intended for seeing.

This generation preached itself,
offering empty ideas
and false prophets,
selling belief in things,
rather than teaching respect toward bodies;
our reward is a path to the mire.

However badly things have turned out,
we are not forsaken, now or ever,
in the sight of Divine Life
—an agreement can yet be struck;
by way of a humble confession,
a forsaking of guile and craft
for truth and honesty.

This is the way to freedom:
as badly as we have failed,
as poorly as we have behaved,
as ugly as we have made ourselves,
we are yet unfinished works,
and every bit of us
—every cell, every thought—
contains all the beauty of Life Itself,
if we would embrace that notion
as a truth and an inevitability.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen